it got cold an'
clamped down over me. Waitin' for you to come an' git me, Honest Simms!

"That bear was bed and board to me until the natives found it, an' me in
it, more dead than alive. Never mind the rest. I get here the day before
you start back for more gold.

"An' I'm goin' with you. But first I'm goin' to have a full an' fair
accountin' o' what you got already. I've got this young chap with me,
an' he'll give me a hand to'ard a square deal."

Lund propelled Rainey forward a few steps and then loosened his grip.
The captain of the _Karluk_ appealed to him directly.

"You're with the _Times_," he said. All through the talk Rainey was
conscious of the gaze of Doctor Carlsen, whose dark eyes appeared to be
mocking the whole proceedings, looking on with the air of a man watching
card-play with a prevision of how the game will come out.

"Mr. Lund is unstrung," said the captain. "He is under the delusion that
we deliberately deserted him and, later, found the gold he speaks of.
The first charge is nonsense. We did all that was possible in the
frightful weather. We barely saved the ship.

"As for the gold, we touched on the island, and we did some prospecting,
a very little, before we were driven offshore. The dust in the poke is
all we secured. We are going back for more, quite naturally. I can prove
all this to you by the log. It is manifestly not doctored, for we
imagined Mr. Lund dead. If we had been able to work the beach
thoroughly, nothing would tempt me into going back again to add to even
a moderate fortune."

Lund had been standing with his great head thrust forward as if
concentrating all his remaining senses in an attempt to judge the
captain's talk. The doctor sat with one leg crossed, smoking a
cigarette, his expression sardonic, sphinxlike. To Rainey, a little
bewildered at being dragged into the affair, and annoyed at it, Captain
Simms' words rang true enough. He did not know what to say, whether to
speak at all. Lund supplied the gap.

"If that ain't the truth, you lie well, Simms," he said. "But I don't
trust ye. You lie when you say you didn't hear me call out I was blind.
Sixty yards away, I was, an' the wind hadn't started. I was afraid--yes,
afraid--an' I yelled at the top of my lungs. An' you sailed off inside
of twenty-four hours."

"Driven off."

"I don't believe ye. You deserted me--left me blind, tucked in the
bloody, freezin' carcass of a bear. Left me like the cur you are. Why,